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CHALDEA
From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria
(Treated As a General Introduction to the Study of Ancient History)
by
ZÉNAÏDE A. RAGOZIN
Member of the "Société Ethnologique" of Paris; of the "American
Oriental Society"; Corresponding Member of the "Athénée
Oriental" of Paris; Author of "Assyria," "Media," Etc.
"He (Carlyle) says it is part of his creed that history is
poetry, could we tell it right."--EMERSON.
Fourth Edition
[Illustration: SHAMASH THE SUN-GOD. (From the Sun Temple at Sippar.)]
London
T. Fisher Unwin
Paternoster Square
New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons
MDCCCXCIII
TO THE MEMBERS OF
THE CLASS,
IN LOVING REMEMBRANCE OF MANY HAPPY HOURS, THIS
VOLUME AND THE FOLLOWING ONES ARE AFFECTIONATELY
INSCRIBED BY THEIR FRIEND.
THE AUTHOR.
IDLEWILD PLANTATION,
SAN ANTONIO,
CLASSIFIED CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION.
I.
PAGE
MESOPOTAMIA.--THE MOUNDS.--THE FIRST SEARCHERS 1-18
§ 1. Complete destruction of Nineveh.--§§ 2-4. Xenophon and the
"Retreat of the Ten Thousand." The Greeks pass the ruins of
Calah and Nineveh, and know them not.--§ 5. Alexander's passage
through Mesopotamia.--§ 6. The Arab invasion and rule.--§ 7.
Turkish rule and mismanagement.--§ 8. Peculiar natural
conditions of Mesopotamia.--§ 9. Actual desolate state of the
country.--§ 10. The plains studded with Mounds. Their curious
aspect.--§ 11. Fragments of works of art amidst the
rubbish.--§ 12. Indifference and superstition of the Turks and
Arabs.--§ 13. Exclusive absorption of European scholars in
Classical Antiquity.--§ 14. Forbidding aspect of the Mounds,
compared with other ruins.--§ 15. Rich, the first explorer.--§ 16.
Botta's work and want of success.--§ 17. Botta's great
discovery.--§ 18. Great sensation created by it.--§ 19.
Layard's first expedition.
II.
LAYARD AND HIS WORK 19-35
§ 1. Layard's arrival at Nimrud. His excitement and
dreams.--§ 2. Beginning of difficulties. The Ogre-like Pasha of
Mossul.--§ 3. Opposition from the Pasha. His malice and
cunning.--§ 4. Discovery of the gigantic head. Fright of the Arabs,
who declare it to be Nimrod.--§ 5. Strange ideas of the Arabs about
the sculptures.--§ 6. Layard's life in the desert.--§ 7.
Terrible heat of summer.--§ 8. Sand-storms and hot
hurricanes.--§ 9. Layard's wretched dwelling.--§ 10.
Unsuccessful attempts at improvement.--§ 11. In what the task
of the explorer consists.--§ 12. Different modes of carrying on
the work of excavation.
III.
THE RUINS 36-93
§ 1. Every country's culture and art determined by its
geographical conditions.--§ 2. Chaldea's absolute deficiency in
wood and stone.--§ 3. Great abundance of mud fit for the
fabrication of bricks; hence the peculiar architecture of
Mesopotamia. Ancient ruins still used as quarries of bricks for
building. Trade of ancient bricks at Hillah.--§ 4. Various
cements used.--§ 5. Construction of artificial platforms.--§ 6.
Ruins of Ziggurats; peculiar shape, and uses of this sort of
buildings.--§ 7. Figures showing the immense amount of labor
used on these constructions.--§ 8. Chaldean architecture
adopted unchanged by the Assyrians.--§ 9. Stone used for
ornament and casing of walls. Water transport in old and modern
times.--§ 10. Imposing aspect of the palaces.--§ 11.
Restoration of Sennacherib's palace by Fergusson.--§ 12.
Pavements of palace halls.--§ 13. Gateways and sculptured slabs
along the walls. Friezes in painted tiles.--§ 14. Proportions
of palace halls and roofing.--§ 15. Lighting of halls.--§ 16.
Causes of the kings' passion for building.--§ 17. Drainage of
palaces and platforms.--§ 18. Modes of destruction.--§ 19. The
Mounds a protection to the ruins they contain. Refilling the
excavations.--§ 20. Absence of ancient tombs in Assyria.--§ 21.
Abundance and vastness of cemeteries in Chaldea.--§ 22. Warka
(Erech) the great Necropolis. Loftus' description.--§ 23.
"Jar-coffins."--§ 24. "Dish-cover" coffins.--§ 25. Sepulchral
vaults.--§ 26. "Slipper-shaped" coffins.--§ 27. Drainage of
sepulchral mounds.--§ 28. Decoration of walls in painted
clay-cones.--§ 29. De Sarzec's discoveries at Tell-Loh.
IV.
THE BOOK OF THE PAST.--THE LIBRARY OF NINEVEH 94-115
§ 1. Object of making books.--§ 2. Books not always of
paper.--§ 3. Universal craving for an immortal name.--§ 4.
Insufficiency of records on various writing materials.
Universal longing for knowledge of the remotest past.--§ 5.
Monumental records.--§ 6. Ruins of palaces and temples, tombs
and caves--the Book of the Past.--§§ 7-8. Discovery by Layard
of the Royal Library at Nineveh.--§ 9. George Smith's work at
the British Museum.--§ 10. His expeditions to Nineveh, his
success and death.--§ 11. Value of the Library.--§§ 12-13.
Contents of the Library.--§ 14. The Tablets.--§ 15. The
cylinders and foundation-tablets.
CHALDEA.
I.
NOMADS AND SETTLERS.--THE FOUR STAGES OF CULTURE. 116-126
§ 1. Nomads.--§ 2. First migrations.--§ 3. Pastoral life--the
second stage.--§ 4. Agricultural life; beginnings of the
State.--§ 5. City-building; royalty.--§ 6. Successive
migrations and their causes.--§ 7. Formation of nations.
II.
THE GREAT RACES.--CHAPTER X. OF GENESIS 127-142
§ 1. Shinar.--§ 2. Berosus.--§ 3. Who were the settlers in
Shinar?--§ 4. The Flood probably not universal.--§§ 5-6. The
blessed race and the accursed, according to Genesis.--§ 7.
Genealogical form of Chap. X. of Genesis.--§ 8. Eponyms.--§ 9.
Omission of some white races from Chap. X.--§ 10. Omission of
the Black Race.--§ 11. Omission of the Yellow Race.
Characteristics of the Turanians.--§ 12. The Chinese.--§ 13.
Who were the Turanians? What became of the Cainites?--§ 14.
Possible identity of both.--§ 15. The settlers in
Shinar--Turanians.
III.
TURANIAN CHALDEA--SHUMIR AND ACCAD.--THE BEGINNINGS OF
RELIGION 146-181
§ 1. Shumir and Accad.--§ 2. Language and name.--§ 3. Turanian
migrations and traditions.--§ 4. Collection of sacred
texts.--§ 5. "Religiosity"--a distinctively human characteristic.
Its first promptings and manifestations.--§ 6. The Magic Collection
and the work of Fr. Lenormant.--§ 7. The Shumiro-Accads' theory
of the world, and their elementary spirits.--§ 8. The
incantation of the Seven Maskim.--§ 9. The evil spirits.--§ 10.
The Arali.--§ 11. The sorcerers.--§ 12. Conjuring and
conjurers.--§ 13. The beneficent Spirits, Êa.--§ 14.
Meridug.--§ 15. A charm against an evil spell.--§ 16. Diseases
considered as evil demons.--§ 17. Talismans. _The
Kerubim._--§ 18. More talismans.--§ 19. The demon of the South-West
Wind.--§ 20. The first gods.--§ 21. _Ud_, the Sun.--§ 22.
_Nin dar_, the nightly Sun.--§ 23. _Gibil_, Fire.--§ 24. Dawn of
moral consciousness.--§ 25. Man's Conscience divinized.--§§ 26-28.
Penitential Psalms.--§ 29. General character of Turanian
religions.
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER III. 181-183
Professor L. Dyer's poetical version of the Incantation against
the Seven Maskim.
IV.
CUSHITES AND SEMITES--EARLY CHALDEAN HISTORY 184-228
§ 1. Oannes.--§ 2. Were the second settlers Cushites or
Semites?--§ 3. Cushite hypothesis. Earliest migrations.--§ 4.
The Ethiopians and the Egyptians.--§ 5. The Canaanites.--§ 6.
Possible Cushite station on the islets of the Persian
Gulf.--§ 7. Colonization of Chaldea possibly by Cushites.--§ 8.
Vagueness of very ancient chronology.--§ 9. Early dates.--§ 10.
Exorbitant figures of Berosus.--§ 11. Early Chaldea--a nursery
of nations.--§ 12. Nomadic Semitic tribes.--§ 13. The tribe of
Arphaxad.--§ 14. Ur of the Chaldees.--§ 15. Scholars divided
between the Cushite and Semitic theories.--§ 16. History
commences with Semitic culture.--§ 17. Priestly rule. The
_patesis_.--§§ 18-19. Sharrukin I. (Sargon I) of Agadê.--§§
20-21. The second Sargon's literary labors.--§§ 22-23. Chaldean
folk-lore, maxims and songs.--§ 24. Discovery of the elder
Sargon's date--3800 B.C.--§ 25. Gudêa of Sir-gulla and Ur-êa of
Ur.--§ 26. Predominance of Shumir. Ur-êa and his son Dungi
first kings of "Shumir and Accad."--§ 27. Their inscriptions
and buildings. The Elamite invasion.--§ 28. Elam.--§§ 29-31.
Khudur-Lagamar and Abraham.--§ 32. Hardness of the Elamite
rule.--§ 33. Rise of Babylon.--§ 34. Hammurabi.--§ 35. Invasion
of the Kasshi.
V.
BABYLONIAN RELIGION 229-257
§ 1. Babylonian calendar.--§ 2. Astronomy conducive to
religious feeling.--§ 3. Sabeism.--§ 4. Priestcraft and
astrology.--§ 5. Transformation of the old religion.--§ 6.
Vague dawning of the monotheistic idea. Divine emanations.--§ 7.
The Supreme Triad.--§ 8. The Second Triad.--§ 9. The five
Planetary deities.--§§ 10-11. Duality of nature. Masculine and
feminine principles. The goddesses.--§ 12. The twelve Great
Gods and their Temples.--§ 13. The temple of Shamash at Sippar
and Mr. Rassam's discovery.--§ 14. Survival of the old Turanian
superstitions.--§ 15. Divination, a branch of Chaldean
"Science."--§§ 16-17. Collection of one hundred tablets on
divination. Specimens.--§ 18. The three classes of "wise men."
"Chaldeans," in later times, a by-word for "magician," and
"astrologer."--§ 19. Our inheritance from the Chaldeans: the
sun-dial, the week, the calendar, the Sabbath.
VI.
LEGENDS AND STORIES 258-293
§ 1. The Cosmogonies of different nations.--§ 2. The antiquity
of the Sacred Books of Babylonia.--§ 3. The legend of Oannes,
told by Berosus. Discovery, by Geo. Smith, of the Creation
Tablets and the Deluge Tablet.--§§ 4-5. Chaldean account of the
Creation.--§ 6. The Cylinder with the human couple, tree and
serpent.--§ 7. Berosus' account of the creation.--§ 8. The
Sacred Tree. Sacredness of the Symbol.--§ 9. Signification of
the Tree-Symbol. The Cosmic Tree.--§ 10. Connection of the
Tree-Symbol and of Ziggurats with the legend of Paradise.--§ 11.
The Ziggurat of Borsippa.--§ 12. It is identified with the
Tower of Babel.--§§ 13-14. Peculiar Orientation of the
Ziggurats.--§ 15. Traces of legends about a sacred grove or
garden.--§ 16. Mummu-Tiamat, the enemy of the gods. Battle of
Bel and Tiamat.--§ 17. The Rebellion of the seven evil spirits,
originally messengers of the gods.--§ 18. The great Tower and
the Confusion of Tongues.
VII.
MYTHS.--HEROES AND THE MYTHICAL EPOS 294-330
§ 1. Definition of the word Myth.--§ 2. The Heroes.--§ 3. The
Heroic Ages and Heroic Myths. The National Epos.--§ 4. The
oldest known Epic.--§ 5. Berosus' account of the Flood.--§ 6.
Geo. Smith's discovery of the original Chaldean narrative.--§ 7.
The Epic divided into books or Tablets.--§ 8. Izdubar the
Hero of the Epic.--§ 9. Erech's humiliation under the Elamite
Conquest. Izdubar's dream.--§ 10. Êabâni the Seer. Izdubar's
invitation and promises to him.--§ 11. Message sent to Êabâni
by Ishtar's handmaidens. His arrival at Erech.--§ 12. Izdubar
and Êabâni's victory over the tyrant Khumbaba.--§ 13. Ishtar's
love message. Her rejection and wrath. The two friends' victory
over the Bull sent by her.--§ 14. Ishtar's vengeance. Izdubar's
journey to the Mouth of the Rivers.--§ 15. Izdubar sails the
Waters of Death and is healed by his immortal ancestor
Hâsisadra.--§ 16. Izdubar's return to Erech and lament over
Êabâni. The seer is translated among the gods.--§ 17. The
Deluge narrative in the Eleventh Tablet of the Izdubar
Epic.--§§ 18-21. Mythic and solar character of the Epic
analyzed.--§ 22. Sun-Myth of the Beautiful Youth, his early
death and resurrection.--§§ 23-24. Dumuzi-Tammuz, the husband
of Ishtar. The festival of Dumuzi in June.--§ 25. Ishtar's
Descent to the Land of the Dead.--§ 26. Universality of the
Solar and Chthonic Myths.
VIII.
RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY.--IDOLATRY AND ANTHROPOMORPHISM.--THE
CHALDEAN LEGENDS AND THE BOOK OF GENESIS.--RETROSPECT 331-336
§ 1. Definition of Mythology and Religion, as distinct from
each other.--§§ 2-3. Instances of pure religious feeling in the
poetry of Shumir and Accad.--§ 4. Religion often stifled by
Mythology.--§§ 5-6. The conception of the immortality of the
soul suggested by the sun's career.--§ 7. This expressed in the
Solar and Chthonic Myths.--§ 8. Idolatry.--§ 9. The Hebrews,
originally polytheists and idolators, reclaimed by their
leaders to Monotheism.--§ 10. Their intercourse with the tribes
of Canaan conducive to relapses.--§ 11. Intermarriage severely
forbidden for this reason.--§ 12. Striking similarity between
the Book of Genesis and the ancient Chaldean legends.--§ 13.
Parallel between the two accounts of the creation.--§ 14.
Anthropomorphism, different from polytheism and idolatry, but
conducive to both.--§§ 15-17. Parallel continued.--§§ 18-19.
Retrospect.
PRINCIPAL WORKS READ OR CONSULTED IN THE PREPARATION OF THIS VOLUME.
BAER, Wilhelm. DER VORGESCHICHTLICHE MENSCH. 1 vol., Leipzig: 1874.
BAUDISSIN, W. von. STUDIEN ZUR SEMITISCHEN RELIGIONSGESCHICHTE. 2 vols.
BUDGE, E. A. Wallis. BABYLONIAN LIFE AND HISTORY. ("Bypaths of Bible
Knowledge" Series, V.) 1884. London: The Religious Tract Society. 1 vol.
---- HISTORY OF ESARHADDON. 1 vol.
BUNSEN, Chr. Carl Jos. GOTT IN DER GESCHICHTE, oder Der Fortschritt des
Glaubens an eine sittliche Weltordnung. 3 vols. Leipzig: 1857.
CASTREN, Alexander. KLEINERE SCHRIFTEN. St. Petersburg: 1862. 1 vol.
CORY. ANCIENT FRAGMENTS. London: 1876. 1 vol.
DELITZSCH, Dr. Friedrich. WO LAG DAS PARADIES? eine
Biblisch-Assyriologische Studie. Leipzig: 1881. 1 vol.
---- DIE SPRACHE DER KOSSÄER. Leipzig: 1885 (or 1884?). 1 vol.
DUNCKER, Max. GESCHICHTE DES ALTERTHUMS. Leipzig: 1878. Vol. 1st.
FERGUSSON, James. PALACES OF NINEVEH AND PERSEPOLIS RESTORED. 1 vol.
HAPPEL, Julius. DIE ALTCHINESISCHE REICHSRELIGION, vom Standpunkte der
Vergleichenden Religionsgeschichte. 46 pages, Leipzig: 1882.
HAUPT, Paul. DER KEILINSCHRIFTLICHE SINTFLUTBERICHT, eine Episode des
Babylonischen Nimrodepos. 36 pages. Göttingen: 1881.
HOMMEL, Dr. Fritz. GESCHICHTE BABYLONIENS UND ASSYRIENS (first
instalment, 160 pp., 1885; and second instalment, 160 pp., 1886).
(Allgemeine Geschichte in einzelnen Darstellungen, Abtheilung 95 und
117.)
---- DIE VORSEMITISCHEN KULTUREN IN ÆGYPTEN UND BABYLONIEN. Leipzig:
1882 and 1883.
LAYARD, Austen H. DISCOVERIES AMONG THE RUINS OF NINEVEH AND BABYLON.
(American Edition.) New York: 1853. 1 vol.
---- NINEVEH AND ITS REMAINS. London: 1849. 2 vols.
LENORMANT, François. LES PREMIÈRES CIVILISATIONS. Êtudes d'Histoire et
d'Archéologie. 1874. Paris: Maisonneuve et Cie. 2 vols.
---- LES ORIGINES DE L'HISTOIRE, d'après la Bible et les Traditions des
Peuples Orientaux. Paris: Maisonneuve et Cie. 3 vol. 1er vol. 1880; 2e
vol. 1882; 3e vol. 1884.
---- LA GENÈSE. Traduction d'après l'Hébreu. Paris: 1883. 1 vol.
---- DIE MAGIE UND WAHRSAGEKUNST DER CHALDÄER. Jena, 1878. 1 vol.
---- IL MITO DI ADONE-TAMMUZ nei Documenti cuneiformi. 32 pages.
Firenze: 1879.
---- SUR LE NOM DE TAMMOUZ. (Extrait des Mémoires du Congrès
international des Orientalistes.) 17 pages. Paris: 1873.
---- A MANUAL OF THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST. Translated by E.
Chevallier. American Edition. Philadelphia: 1871. 2 vols.
LOFTUS. CHALDEA AND SUSIANA. 1 vol. London: 1857.
LOTZ, Guilelmus. QUÆSTIONES DE HISTORIA SABBATI. Lipsiae: 1883.
MAURY, Alfred L. F. LA MAGIE ET L'ASTROLOGIE dans l'antiquité et en
Moyen Age. Paris: 1877. 1 vol. Quatrième édition.
MASPERO, G. HISTOIRE ANCIENNE DES PEUPLES DE L'ORIENT. 3e édition, 1878.
Paris: Hachette & Cie. 1 vol.
MÉNANT, Joachim. LA BIBLIOTHÈQUE DU PALAIS DE NINIVE. 1 vol.
(Bibliothèque Orientale Elzévirienne.) Paris: 1880.
MEYER, Eduard. GESCHICHTE DES ALTERTHUMS. Stuttgart: 1884. Vol. 1st.
MÜLLER, Max. LECTURES ON THE SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 2 vols. American
edition. New York: 1875.
MÜRDTER, F. KURZGEFASSTE GESCHICHTE BABYLONIENS UND ASSYRIENS, mit
besonderer Berücksichtigung des Alten Testaments. Mit Vorwort und
Beigaben von Friedrich Delitzsch. Stuttgart: 1882. 1 vol.
OPPERT, Jules. L'IMMORTALITÉ DE L'AME CHEZ LES CHALDÉENS. 28 pages.
(Extrait des Annales de Philosophie Chrètienne, 1874.) Perrot et
Chipiez.
QUATREFAGES, A. de. L'ESPÈCE HUMAINE. Sixième edition. 1 vol. Paris:
1880.
RAWLINSON, George. THE FIVE GREAT MONARCHIES OF THE ANCIENT EASTERN
WORLD. London: 1865. 1st and 2d vols.
RECORDS OF THE PAST. Published under the sanction of the Society of
Biblical Archæology. Volumes I. III. V. VII. IX. XI.
SAYCE, A. H. FRESH LIGHT FROM ANCIENT MONUMENTS. ("By-Paths of Bible
Knowledge" Series, II.) 3d edition, 1885. London: 1 vol.
---- THE ANCIENT EMPIRES OF THE EAST. 1 vol. London, 1884.
---- BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 1 vol. London, 1884.
SCHRADER, Eberhard. KEILINSCHRIFTEN und Geschichtsforschung. Giessen:
1878. 1 vol.
---- DIE KEILINSCHRIFTEN und das Alte Testament. Giessen: 1883. 1 vol.
---- ISTAR'S HÖLLENFAHRT. 1 vol. Giessen: 1874.
---- ZUR FRAGE NACH DEM URSPRUNG DER ALTBABYLONISCHEN KULTUR. Berlin:
1884.
SMITH, George. ASSYRIA from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Nineveh.
("Ancient History from the Monuments" Series.) London: 1 vol.
TYLOR, Edward B. PRIMITIVE CULTURE. Second American Edition. 2 vols. New
York: 1877.
ZIMMERN, Heinrich. BABYLONISCHE BUSSPSALMEN, umschrieben, übersetzt und
erklärt. 17 pages, 4to. Leipzig: 1885.
Numerous Essays by Sir Henry Rawlinson, Friedr. Delitzsch, E. Schrader
and others, in Mr. Geo. Rawlinson's translation of Herodotus, in the
Calwer Bibellexikon, and in various periodicals, such as "Proceedings"
and "Transactions" of the "Society of Biblical Archæology," "Jahrbücher
für Protestantische Theologie," "Zeitschrift für Keilschriftforschung,"
"Gazette Archéologique," and others.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
SHAMASH THE SUN-GOD.
_From a tablet in the British Museum._ _Frontispiece._
1. CUNEIFORM CHARACTERS _Ménant._ 10
2. TEMPLE OF ÊA AT ERIDHU _Hommel._ 23
3. VIEW OF EUPHRATES NEAR BABYLON _Babelon._ 31
4. MOUND OF BABIL _Oppert._ 33
5. BRONZE DISH _Perrot and Chipiez._ 35
6. BRONZE DISH (RUG PATTERN) _Perrot and Chipiez._ 37
7. SECTION OF BRONZE DISH _Perrot and Chipiez._ 39
8. VIEW OF NEBBI-YUNUS _Babelon._ 41
9. BUILDING IN BAKED BRICK. _Perrot and Chipiez._ 43
10. MOUND OF NINEVEH _Hommel._ 45
11. MOUND OF MUGHEIR (ANCIENT UR) _Taylor._ 47
12. TERRACE WALL AT KHORSABAD _Perrot and Chipiez._ 49
13. RAFT BUOYED BY INFLATED SKINS (ANCIENT) _Kaulen._ 51
14. RAFT BUOYED BY INFLATED SKINS (MODERN) _Kaulen._ 51
15. EXCAVATIONS AT MUGHEIR (UR) _Hommel._ 53
16. WARRIORS SWIMMING ON INFLATED SKINS _Babelon._ 55
17. VIEW OF KOYUNJIK _Hommel._ 57
18. STONE LION AT ENTRANCE OF A TEMPLE _Perrot and Chipiez._ 59
19. COURT OF HAREM AT KHORSABAD. RESTORED _Perrot and Chipiez._ 61
20. CIRCULAR PILLAR BASE _Perrot and Chipiez._ 63
21. INTERIOR VIEW OF HAREM CHAMBER _Perrot and Chipiez._ 65
22, 23. COLORED FRIEZE IN ENAMELLED TILES _Perrot and Chipiez._ 67
24. PAVEMENT SLAB _Perrot and Chipiez._ 69
25. SECTION OF ORNAMENTAL DOORWAY, KHORSABAD _Perrot and Chipiez._ 71
26. WINGED LION WITH HUMAN HEAD _Perrot and Chipiez._ 73
27. WINGED BULL _Perrot and Chipiez._ 75
28. MAN-LION _Perrot and Chipiez._ 77
29. FRAGMENT OF ENAMELLED BRICK _Perrot and Chipiez._ 79
30. RAM'S HEAD IN ALABASTER _British Museum._ 81
31. EBONY COMB _Perrot and Chipiez._ 81
32. BRONZE FORK AND SPOON _Perrot and Chipiez._ 81
33. ARMENIAN LOUVRE _Botta._ 83
34, 35. VAULTED DRAINS _Perrot and Chipiez._ 84
36. CHALDEAN JAR-COFFIN _Taylor._ 85
37. "DISH-COVER" TOMB AT MUGHEIR _Taylor._ 87
38. "DISH-COVER" TOMB _Taylor._ 87
39. SEPULCHRAL VAULT AT MUGHEIR _Taylor._ 89
40. STONE JARS FROM GRAVES _Hommel._ 89
41. DRAIN IN MOUND _Perrot and Chipiez._ 90
42. WALL WITH DESIGNS IN TERRA-COTTA _Loftus._ 91
43. TERRA-COTTA CONE _Loftus._ 91
44. HEAD OF ANCIENT CHALDEAN _Perrot and Chipiez._ 101
45. SAME, PROFILE VIEW _Perrot and Chipiez._ 101
46. CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTION _Perrot and Chipiez._ 107
47. INSCRIBED CLAY TABLET _Smith's Chald. Gen._ 109
48. CLAY TABLET IN ITS CASE _Hommel._ 111
49. ANTIQUE BRONZE SETTING OF CYLINDER _Perrot and Chipiez._ 112
50. CHALDEAN CYLINDER AND IMPRESSION _Perrot and Chipiez._ 113
51. ASSYRIAN CYLINDER 113
52. PRISM OF SENNACHERIB _British Museum._ 115
53. INSCRIBED CYLINDER FROM BORSIP _Ménant._ 117
54. DEMONS FIGHTING _British Museum._ 165
55. DEMON OF THE SOUTH-WEST WIND _Perrot and Chipiez._ 169
56. HEAD OF DEMON _British Museum._ 170
57. OANNES _Smith's Chald. Gen._ 187
58. CYLINDER OF SARGON FROM AGADÊ _Hommel._ 207
59. STATUE OF GUDÊA _Hommel._ 217
60. BUST INSCRIBED WITH NAME OF NEBO _British Museum._ 243
61. BACK OF TABLET WITH ACCOUNT OF FLOOD _Smith's Chald. Gen._ 262
62. BABYLONIAN CYLINDER _Smith's Chald. Gen._ 266
63. FEMALE WINGED FIGURES AND SACRED TREES _British Museum._ 269
64. WINGED SPIRITS BEFORE SACRED TREE _Smith's Chald. Gen._ 270
65. SARGON OF ASSYRIA BEFORE SACRED TREE _Perrot and Chipiez._ 271
66. EAGLE-HEADED FIGURE BEFORE SACRED TREE _Perrot and Chipiez._ 273
67. FOUR-WINGED HUMAN FIGURE
BEFORE SACRED TREE _Perrot and Chipiez._ 275
68. TEMPLE AND HANGING GARDENS AT KOYUNJIK _British Museum._ 277
69. PLAN OF A ZIGGURAT _Perrot and Chipiez._ 278
70. "ZIGGURAT" RESTORED _Perrot and Chipiez._ 279
71. BIRS-NIMRUD _Perrot and Chipiez._ 281
72, 73. BEL FIGHTS DRAGON _Perrot and Chipiez._ 289
74. BATTLE BETWEEN BEL AND DRAGON _Smith's Chald. Gen._ 291
75. IZDUBAR AND LION _Smith's Chald. Gen._ 306
76. IZDUBAR AND LION _British Museum._ 307
77. IZDUBAR AND ÊABÂNI _Smith's Chald. Gen._ 309
78. IZDUBAR AND LION _Perrot and Chipiez._ 310
79. SCORPION-MAN _Smith's Chald. Gen._ 311
80. STONE OBJECT FOUND AT ABU-HABBA 312
[Illustration: THE COUNTRIES ABOUT CHALDEA.]
INTRODUCTION.
I.
MESOPOTAMIA.--THE MOUNDS.--THE FIRST SEARCHERS.
1. In or about the year before Christ 606, Nineveh, the great city, was
destroyed. For many hundred years had she stood in arrogant splendor,
her palaces towering above the Tigris and mirrored in its swift waters;
army after army had gone forth from her gates and returned laden with
the spoils of conquered countries; her monarchs had ridden to the high
place of sacrifice in chariots drawn by captive kings. But her time came
at last. The nations assembled and encompassed her around. Popular
tradition tells how over two years lasted the siege; how the very river
rose and battered her walls; till one day a vast flame rose up to
heaven; how the last of a mighty line of kings, too proud to surrender,
thus saved himself, his treasures and his capital from the shame of
bondage. Never was city to rise again where Nineveh had been.
2. Two hundred years went by. Great changes had passed over the land.
The Persian kings now held the rule of Asia. But their greatness also
was leaning towards its decline and family discords undermined their
power. A young prince had rebelled against his elder brother and
resolved to tear the crown from him by main force. To accomplish this,
he had raised an army and called in the help of Grecian hirelings. They
came, 13,000 in number, led by brave and renowned generals, and did
their duty by him; but their valor could not save him from defeat and
death. Their own leader fell into an ambush, and they commenced their
retreat under the most disastrous circumstances and with little hope of
escape.
3. Yet they accomplished it. Surrounded by open enemies and false
friends, tracked and pursued, through sandy wastes and pathless
mountains, now parched with heat, now numbed with cold, they at last
reached the sunny and friendly Hellespont. It was a long and weary march
from Babylon on the Euphrates, near which city the great battle had been
fought. They might not have succeeded had they not chosen a great and
brave commander, Xenophon, a noble Athenian, whose fame as scholar and
writer equals his renown as soldier and general. Few books are more
interesting than the lively relation he has left of his and his
companions' toils and sufferings in this expedition, known in history as
"The Retreat of the Ten Thousand"--for to that number had the original
13,000 been reduced by battles, privations and disease. So cultivated a
man could not fail, even in the midst of danger and weighed down by
care, to observe whatever was noteworthy in the strange lands which he
traversed. So he tells us how one day his little army, after a forced
march in the early morning hours and an engagement with some light
troops of pursuers, having repelled the attack and thereby secured a
short interval of safety, travelled on till they came to the banks of
the Tigris. On that spot, he goes on, there was a vast desert city. Its
wall was twenty-five feet wide, one hundred feet high and nearly seven
miles in circuit. It was built of brick with a basement, twenty feet
high, of stone. Close by the city there stood a stone pyramid, one
hundred feet in width, and two hundred in height. Xenophon adds that
this city's name was Larissa and that it had anciently been inhabited by
Medes; that the king of Persia, when he took the sovereignty away from
the Medes, besieged it, but could not in any way get possession of it,
until, a cloud having obscured the sun, the inhabitants forsook the city
and thus it was taken.
4. Some eighteen miles further on (a day's march) the Greeks came to
another great deserted city, which Xenophon calls Mespila. It had a
similar but still higher wall. This city, he tells us, had also been
inhabited by Medes, and taken by the king of Persia. Now these curious
ruins were all that was left of Kalah and Nineveh, the two Assyrian
capitals. In the short space of two hundred years, men had surely not
yet lost the memory of Nineveh's existence and rule, yet they trod the
very site where it had stood and knew it not, and called its ruins by a
meaningless Greek name, handing down concerning it a tradition absurdly
made up of true and fictitious details, jumbled into inextricable
confusion. For Nineveh had been the capital of the Assyrian Empire,
while the Medes were one of the nations who attacked and destroyed it.
And though an eclipse of the sun--(the obscuring cloud could mean
nothing else)--did occur, created great confusion and produced important
results, it was at a later period and on an entirely different occasion.
As to "the king of Persia," no such personage had anything whatever to
do with the catastrophe of Nineveh, since the Persians had not yet been
heard of at that time as a powerful people, and their country was only a
small and insignificant principality, tributary to Media. So effectually
had the haughty city been swept from the face of the earth!
5. Another hundred years brought on other and even greater changes. The
Persian monarchy had followed in the wake of the empires that had gone
before it and fallen before Alexander, the youthful hero of Macedon. As
the conqueror's fleet of light-built Grecian ships descended the
Euphrates towards Babylon, they were often hindered in their progress by
huge dams of stone built across the river. The Greeks, with great labor,
removed several, to make navigation more easy. They did the same on
several other rivers,--nor knew that they were destroying the last
remaining vestige of a great people's civilization,--for these dams had
been used to save the water and distribute it into the numerous canals,
which covered the arid country with their fertilizing network. They may
have been told what travellers are told in our own days by the
Arabs--that these dams had been constructed once upon a time by Nimrod,
the Hunter-King. For some of them remain even still, showing their huge,
square stones, strongly united by iron cramps, above the water before
the river is swollen with the winter rains.
6. More than one-and-twenty centuries have rolled since then over the
immense valley so well named Mesopotamia--"the Land between the
Rivers,"--and each brought to it more changes, more wars, more
disasters, with rare intervals of rest and prosperity. Its position
between the East and the West, on the very high-road of marching armies
and wandering tribes, has always made it one of the great battle grounds
of the world. About one thousand years after Alexander's rapid invasion
and short-lived conquest, the Arabs overran the country, and settled
there, bringing with them a new civilization and the new religion given
them by their prophet Mohammed, which they thought it their mission to
carry, by force of word or sword, to the bounds of the earth. They even
founded there one of the principal seats of their sovereignty, and
Baghdad yielded not greatly in magnificence and power to Babylon of old.
7. Order, laws, and learning now flourished for a few hundred years,
when new hordes of barbarous people came pouring in from the East, and
one of them, the Turks, at last established itself in the land and
stayed. They rule there now. The valley of the Tigris and Euphrates is
a province of the Ottoman or Turkish Empire, which has its capital in
Constantinople; it is governed by pashas, officials sent by the Turkish
government, or the "Sublime Porte," as it is usually called, and the
ignorant, oppressive, grinding treatment to which it has now been
subjected for several hundred years has reduced it to the lowest depth
of desolation. Its wealth is exhausted, its industry destroyed, its
prosperous cities have disappeared or dwindled into insignificance. Even
Mossul, built by the Arabs on the right bank of the Tigris, opposite the
spot where Nineveh once stood, one of their finest cities, famous for
the manufacturing of the delicate cotton tissue to which it gave its
name--(_muslin_, _mousseline_)--would have lost all importance, had it
not the honor to be the chief town of a Turkish district and to harbor a
pasha. And Baghdad, although still the capital of the whole province, is
scarcely more than the shadow of her former glorious self; and her looms
no longer supply the markets of the world with wonderful shawls and
carpets, and gold and silver tissues of marvellous designs.
8. Mesopotamia is a region which must suffer under neglect and
misgovernment even more than others; for, though richly endowed by
nature, it is of a peculiar formation, requiring constant care and
intelligent management to yield all the return of which it is capable.
That care must chiefly consist in distributing the waters of the two
great rivers and their affluents over all the land by means of an
intricate system of canals, regulated by a complete and well-kept set
of dams and sluices, with other simpler arrangements for the remoter and
smaller branches. The yearly inundations caused by the Tigris and
Euphrates, which overflow their banks in spring, are not sufficient;
only a narrow strip of land on each side is benefited by them. In the
lowlands towards the Persian Gulf there is another inconvenience: the
country there being perfectly flat, the waters accumulate and stagnate,
forming vast pestilential swamps where rich pastures and wheat-fields
should be--and have been in ancient times. In short, if left to itself,
Upper Mesopotamia, (ancient Assyria), is unproductive from the
barrenness of its soil, and Lower Mesopotamia, (ancient Chaldea and
Babylonia), runs to waste, notwithstanding its extraordinary fertility,
from want of drainage.
9. Such is actually the condition of the once populous and flourishing
valley, owing to the principles on which the Turkish rulers carry on
their government. They look on their remoter provinces as mere sources
of revenue for the state and its officials. But even admitting this as
their avowed and chief object, they pursue it in an altogether
wrong-headed and short-sighted way. The people are simply and openly
plundered, and no portion of what is taken from them is applied to any
uses of local public utility, as roads, irrigation, encouragement of
commerce and industry and the like; what is not sent home to the Sultan
goes into the private pouches of the pasha and his many subaltern
officials. This is like taking the milk and omitting to feed the cow.
The consequence is, the people lose their interest in work of any kind,
leave off striving for an increase of property which they will not be
permitted to enjoy, and resign themselves to utter destitution with a
stolid apathy most painful to witness. The land has been brought to such
a degree of impoverishment that it is actually no longer capable of
producing crops sufficient for a settled population. It is cultivated
only in patches along the rivers, where the soil is rendered so fertile
by the yearly inundations as to yield moderate returns almost unasked,
and that mostly by wandering tribes of Arabs or of Kurds from the
mountains to the north, who raise their tents and leave the spot the
moment they have gathered in their little harvest--if it has not been
appropriated first by some of the pasha's tax-collectors or by roving
parties of Bedouins--robber-tribes from the adjoining Syrian and Arabian
deserts, who, mounted on their own matchless horses, are carried across
the open border with as much facility as the drifts of desert sand so
much dreaded by travellers. The rest of the country is left to nature's
own devices and, wherever it is not cut up by mountains or rocky ranges,
offers the well-known twofold character of steppe-land: luxuriant grassy
vegetation during one-third of the year and a parched, arid waste the
rest of the time, except during the winter rains and spring floods.
10. A wild and desolate scene! Imposing too in its sorrowful grandeur,
and well suited to a land which may be called a graveyard of empires and
nations. The monotony of the landscape would be unbroken, but for
certain elevations and hillocks of strange and varied shapes, which
spring up, as it were, from the plain in every direction; some are high
and conical or pyramidal in form, others are quite extensive and rather
flat on the summit, others again long and low, and all curiously
unconnected with each other or any ridge of hills or mountains. This is
doubly striking in Lower Mesopotamia or Babylonia, proverbial for its
excessive flatness. The few permanent villages, composed of mud-huts or
plaited reed-cabins, are generally built on these eminences, others are
used as burying-grounds, and a mosque, the Mohammedan house of prayer,
sometimes rises on one or the other. They are pleasing objects in the
beautiful spring season, when corn-fields wave on their summits, and
their slopes, as well as all the surrounding plains, are clothed with
the densest and greenest of herbage, enlivened with countless flowers of
every hue, till the surface of the earth looks, from a distance or from
a height, as gorgeous as the richest Persian carpet. But, on approaching
nearer to these hillocks or mounds, an unprepared traveller would be
struck by some peculiar features. Their substance being rather soft and
yielding, and the winter rains pouring down with exceeding violence,
their sides are furrowed in many places with ravines, dug by the rushing
streams of rain-water. These streams of course wash down much of the
substance itself and carry it far into the plain, where it lies
scattered on the surface quite distinct from the soil. These washings
are found to consist not of earth or sand, but of rubbish, something
like that which lies in heaps wherever a house is being built or
demolished, and to contain innumerable fragments of bricks, pottery,
stone evidently worked by the hand and chisel; many of these fragments
moreover bearing inscriptions in complicated characters composed of one
curious figure shaped like the head of an arrow, and used in every
possible position and combination,--like this:
[Illustration: 1.--CUNEIFORM CHARACTERS.]
11. In the crevices or ravines themselves, the waters having cleared
away masses of this loose rubbish, have laid bare whole sides of walls
of solid brick-work, sometimes even a piece of a human head or limb, or
a corner of sculptured stone-slab, always of colossal size and bold,
striking execution. All this tells its own tale and the conclusion is
self-apparent: that these elevations are not natural hillocks or knolls,
but artificial mounds, heaps of earth and building materials which have
been at some time placed there by men, then, collapsing and crumbling to
rubbish from neglect, have concealed within their ample sides all that
remains of those ancient structures and works of art, clothed themselves
in verdure, and deceitfully assumed all the outward signs of natural
hills.
12. The Arabs never thought of exploring these curious heaps. Mohammedan
nations, as a rule, take little interest in relics of antiquity;
moreover they are very superstitious, and, as their religious law
strictly forbids them to represent the human form either in painting or
sculpture lest such reproduction might lead ignorant and misguided
people back to the abominations of idolatry, so they look on relics of
ancient statuary with suspicion amounting to fear and connect them with
magic and witchcraft. It is, therefore, with awe not devoid of horror
that they tell travellers that the mounds contain underground passages
which are haunted not only by wild beasts, but by evil spirits--for have
not sometimes strange figures carved in stone been dimly perceived in
the crevices? Better instructed foreigners have long ago assumed that
within these mounds must be entombed whatever ruins may be preserved of
the great cities of yore. Their number formed no objection, for it was
well known how populous the valley had been in the days of its splendor,
and that, besides several famous cities, it could boast no end of
smaller ones, often separated from each other by a distance of only a
few miles. The long low mounds were rightly supposed to represent the
ancient walls, and the higher and vaster ones to have been the site of
the palaces and temples. The Arabs, though utterly ignorant of history
of any kind, have preserved in their religion some traditions from the
Bible, and so it happens that out of these wrecks of ages some biblical
names still survive. Almost everything of which they do not know the
origin, they ascribe to Nimrod; and the smaller of the two mounds
opposite Mosul, which mark the spot where Nineveh itself once stood,
they call "Jonah's Mound," and stoutly believe the mosque which crowns
it, surrounded by a comparatively prosperous village, to contain the
tomb of Jonah himself, the prophet who was sent to rebuke and warn the
wicked city. As the Mohammedans honor the Hebrew prophets, the whole
mound is sacred in their eyes in consequence.
13. If travellers had for some time been aware of these general facts
concerning the Mounds, it was many years before their curiosity and
interest were so far aroused as to make them go to the trouble and
expense of digging into them, in order to find out what they really
contained. Until within the last hundred years or so, not only the
general public, but even highly cultivated men and distinguished
scholars, under the words "study of antiquity," understood no more than
the study of so-called "_Classical_ Antiquity," i.e., of the language,
history and literature of the Greeks and Romans, together with the
ruins, works of art, and remains of all sorts left by these two nations.
Their knowledge of other empires and people they took from the Greek and
Roman historians and writers, without doubting or questioning their
statements, or--as we say now--without subjecting their statements to
any criticism. Moreover, European students in their absorption in and
devotion to classical studies, were too apt to follow the example of
their favorite authors and to class the entire rest of the world, as far
as it was known in ancient times, under the sweeping and somewhat
contemptuous by-name of "Barbarians," thus allowing them but a secondary
importance and an inferior claim to attention.
14. Things began greatly to change towards the end of the last century.
Yet the mounds of Assyria and Babylonia were still suffered to keep
their secret unrevealed. This want of interest may be in part explained
by their peculiar nature. They are so different from other ruins. A row
of massive pillars or of stately columns cut out on the clear blue sky,
with the desert around or the sea at their feet,--a broken arch or
battered tombstone clothed with ivy and hanging creepers, with the blue
and purple mountains for a background, are striking objects which first
take the eye by their beauty, then invite inspection by the easy
approach they offer. But these huge, shapeless heaps! What labor to
remove even a small portion of them! And when that is done, who knows
whether their contents will at all repay the effort and expense?
15. The first European whose love of learning was strong enough to make
him disregard all such doubts and difficulties, was Mr. Rich, an
Englishman. He was not particularly successful, nor were his researches
very extensive, being carried on entirely with his private means; yet
his name will always be honorably remembered, for he was _the first_ who
went to work with pickaxe and shovel, who hired men to dig, who measured
and described some of the principal mounds on the Euphrates, thus laying
down the groundwork of all later and more fruitful explorations in that
region. It was in 1820 and Mr. Rich was then political resident or
representative of the East India Company at Baghdad. He also tried the
larger of the two mounds opposite Mosul, encouraged by the report that,
a short time before he arrived there, a sculpture representing men and
animals had been disclosed to view. Unfortunately he could not procure
even a fragment of this treasure, for the people of Mosul, influenced by
their _ulema_--(doctor of the law)--who had declared these sculptures to
be "idols of the infidels," had walked across the river from the city in
a body and piously shattered them to atoms. Mr. Rich had not the good
luck to come across any such find himself, and after some further
efforts, left the place rather disheartened. He carried home to England
the few relics he had been able to obtain. In the absence of more
important ones, they were very interesting, consisting in fragments of
inscriptions, of pottery, in engraved stone, bricks and pieces of
bricks. After his death all these articles were placed in the British
Museum, where they formed the foundation of the present noble
Chaldea-Assyrian collection of that great institution. Nothing more was
undertaken for years, so that it could be said with literal truth that,
up to 1842, "a case three feet square inclosed all that remained, not
only of the great city Nineveh, but of Babylon itself!"[A]
16. The next in the field was Mr. Botta, appointed French Consul at
Mosul in 1842. He began to dig at the end of the same year, and
naturally attached himself specially to the larger of the two mounds
opposite Mosul, named KOYUNJIK, after a small village at its base. This
mound is the Mespila of Xenophon. He began enthusiastically, and worked
on for over three months, but repeated disappointments were beginning to
produce discouragement, when one day a peasant from a distant village
happened to be looking on at the small party of workmen. He was much
amused on observing that every--to him utterly worthless--fragment of
alabaster, brick or pottery, was carefully picked out of the rubbish,
most tenderly handled and laid aside, and laughingly remarked that they
might be better repaid for their trouble, if they would try the mound on
which his village was built, for that lots of such rubbish had kept
continually turning up, when they were digging the foundations of their
houses.
17. Mr. Botta had by this time fallen into a rather hopeless mood; yet
he did not dare to neglect the hint, and sent a few men to the mound
which had been pointed out to him, and which, as well as the village on
the top of it, bore the name of KHORSABAD. His agent began operations
from the top. A well was sunk into the mound, and very soon brought the
workmen to the top of a wall, which, on further digging, was found to be
lined along its base with sculptured slabs of some soft substance much
like gypsum or limestone. This discovery quickly brought Mr. Botta to
the spot, in a fever of excitement. He now took the direction of the
works himself, had a trench dug from the outside straight into the
mound, wide and deep, towards the place already laid open from above.
What was his astonishment on finding that he had entered a hall entirely
lined all round, except where interruptions indicated the place of
doorways leading into other rooms, with sculptured slabs similar to the
one first discovered, and representing scenes of battles, sieges and the
like. He walked as in a dream. It was a new and wonderful world suddenly
opened. For these sculptures evidently recorded the deeds of the
builder, some powerful conqueror and king. And those long and close
lines engraved in the stone, all along the slabs, in the same peculiar
character as the short inscriptions on the bricks that lay scattered on
the plain--they must surely contain the text to these sculptured
illustrations. But who is to read them? They are not like any known
writing in the world and may remain a sealed book forever. Who, then,
was the builder? To what age belong these structures? Which of the wars
we read about are here portrayed? None of these questions, which must
have strangely agitated him, could Mr. Botta have answered at the time.
But not the less to him remains the glory of having, first of living
men, entered the palace of an Assyrian king.
18. Mr. Botta henceforth devoted himself exclusively to the mound of
Khorsabad. His discovery created an immense sensation in Europe.
Scholarly indifference was not proof against so unlooked-for a shock;
the revulsion was complete and the spirit of research and enterprise was
effectually aroused, not to slumber again. The French consul was
supplied by his government with ample means to carry on excavations on a
large scale. If the first success may be considered as merely a great
piece of good fortune, the following ones were certainly due to
intelligent, untiring labor and ingenuous scholarship. We see the
results in Botta's voluminous work "Monuments de Ninive"[B] and in the
fine Assyrian collection of the Louvre, in the first room of which is
placed, as is but just, the portrait of the man to whose efforts and
devotion it is due.